Chiaroscuro
by karlalujah
Summary: "But she would always be Cuddy to him, no matter what her name was now." After Wilson dies, House goes on a road trip and accidentally meets Cuddy.
1. Shadows

**Title:** Chiaroscuro  
**Pairing:** House/Cuddy  
**Synopsis:** "But she would always be Cuddy to him, no matter what her name was now." After Wilson dies, House goes on a road trip and accidentally meets Cuddy.  
**Notes:** This might be loosely based on canon again, since I didn't watch Season 8 of House.

* * *

**Part I: Shadows**

He might as well have been hallucinating.

If he was, it was probably his drug-addled brain's way of telling him that (a) he has made a grave transgression; and (b) this was its form of punishment. Because across the street was Lisa Cuddy, in the flesh, and she was not alone.

Thinking of her was torture enough, that's why he always made sure to try to think of Not Thinking About _Her_. But seeing her, physically real, physically _there_, across the street from him? It was even more agonizing. She was holding hands with two children: one that he assumed was Rachel (the kid definitely grew several inches), and a boy roughly older than Rachel was. They were looking at a display of toys, giggling, talking, and more importantly, _bonding_. The three were too intimate-too _happy_ not to be a family. And several feet away from them, House could see that. It couldn't be a nephew; it didn't appear to be Julia's offspring. It certainly didn't look like it popped out of a Cuddy vagina, despite its brown hair. And that could only mean one thing: Cuddy was _married_.

Or she was with someone. It really didn't matter. House gritted his teeth and gripped his cane tightly. _Of course. Of course she'd marry someone._ With Cuddy, marriage was inevitable, he thought. But not with him, he scowled.

Suddenly he heard her laughter resonate from the other side of the road. And that was when he _literally_ felt pain in every part of his body. His leg cramped, his chest tightened, and his head ached. He felt like he wanted to throw up that very moment. But he didn't. He couldn't.

And it was all because of her.

His gaze was on her, and she was still beautiful. She looked radiant, even. Her hair was cut shorter than he'd like it to be, but she looked as if she didn't have a care in the world. And maybe that was true. And he wasn't sure if he wanted to kill her, fuck her, or worship her. He didn't know if he wanted to make her beg ('Come back to me, House. Please,' was what he thought of in bed at times) or if he wanted to do so instead. He felt pain in every part of his body, and it was all because of Cuddy.

What would Wilson say if he was still here? He didn't know, and he wouldn't know. And now was not the time to think of his best friend. Not when there were other things on his mind; not when he had only _her_ on his mind.

Maybe he should just finally get it over with and _die_.

But he couldn't; maybe not yet. He just wanted to find out.

-

There were many things that Gregory House couldn't help doing, and snooping was one of those things. It was easy for him to say that he didn't know what became of Cuddy, because he really didn't know. Where she was, her job, if she was with someone, Rachel; of those, he didn't have any idea about.

But now she was here. Or in this case, he was, and he saw her by accident. He was here, and he needed to know what became of Lisa Cuddy.

It was fairly easy to get a decent P.I. in Minnesota. All he had to do was to skim through the Yellow Pages in the motel he was staying at, and _voila_. _Problem nearly solved_. The man had a potbelly, a moustache, and a balding head of hair and House hoped that it would make Mr. Tate Feldman, P.I. inconspicuous.

"Here you go, Mr. House," Tate handed him The Lisa Cuddy Papers. He was eating a glazed donut in House's room, which was sparsely decorated. It had a single bed, hopefully clean sheets, a TV, a fridge, a bathroom, and a bedside table for only twenty-five dollars a night. The place even had a lithograph of Picasso's 'Guernica'. Talk about sophisticated. The room could've been a dump. "Everything you wanted to know about Doctor Lisa Cuddy, photos included," the man lisped.

House simply grunted and handed him five one-hundred dollar bills.

"Now wait just one second." Tate protested, his arms akimbo. "Wait just one, tiny second here. I got you the broad's files, photos, _plus_ video. We specifically agreed that it was six, or six-fifty. Not five hundred."

"_I_ paid for the donut you were eating, and what you're now spewing on my shirt. I paid for your food, and that cost me approximately a hundred and fifty-four f. Add that to the five-hundred, and you get your six-fifty. Plus four. Do the math."

"Look, mister. I ain't going here 'til you-"

"_Doctor_," House interrupted. It wasn't really true. He was legally dead anyway. "_Doctor_ House."

"_Doctor_ House," Tate sneered. He finally finished eating the rest of his donut, wiped his hands on House's bedspread, and put his hands in his pockets.

House stifled the urge to hit the man with his cane. _Lucas was nicer_, he thought. But then his thoughts came back to Cuddy. He then concluded that private investigators were the Scum of the Earth.

"You know what the great thing about stakeouts is? I got to see your Doctor Cuddy in her underwear. _Twice._ Damn, that woman's hot. I'll remember her when I'm cold and lonely, _Doctor _House."

House quickly swung his cane towards Tate, but the man was swift despite his size. When he heard the door slam behind Tate, he hit the bed several times. Then he hit the paper-thin wall. He saw a hole.

"Hey! You bastard!" someone yelled from the other room. "Get your stick outta the wall or we'll…We'll report you!"

He stilled for a moment. _I drove my cane through a wall_, he thought.

"I'll pay for it!" he shouted back.

He felt drained, and sat on the bed.

Boy, was he pathetic, he told himself.


	2. Light

**Author's Note: **This part was definitely difficult to write, because it had no movement at all in terms of plot, and I don't exactly know how to write what goes on in House's head. But I tried. I hope it paid off. Oh! And thank you for reading!

* * *

**Part II: Light**

It surprised him that he didn't know anything about Cuddy's whereabouts. Not after two years.

If it was such an anomaly to let Cuddy be, the truth was that he let himself simmer and brood over how their relationship finally ended all this time. What spurred him to such heights of self control, he didn't quite know. Maybe it was regret. Anger. Hurt. Maybe it was guilt, which he was sure he never felt. _He wasn't Cuddy, after all_. It comforted him these past two years that he never knew what became of her.

But now he _was_ here. That fucking scared him. His hands shook violently as he opened the manila folder. He took another swig of scotch and poured himself another glass. _Here goes_.

"So she _is_ married," he said to no one in particular. Maybe to his subconscious. "_Doctor Lisa Cuddy-Roth_."

He was nearly pleasantly surprised that this was the reason it took the P.I. a couple of days. _So that's why_, he thought. He wondered if he should still call her Cuddy-if he could still think of her as Cuddy. But she would always be Cuddy to him, no matter what her name was now.

By the time he was nearly done with her file, he abandoned his glass of scotch for the bottle. So she was married with two kids, Rachel and Colin. Rachel was now five, in first grade, at a prestigious private school. The kid wasn't an idiot, after all. Colin was in third grade.

He didn't know what to feel about the fact that Cuddy-or Cuddy-Roth, or Roth-wasn't able to get pregnant. Should he feel elated that she didn't have a kid with her husband? Did she even want to get pregnant in the two years that have passed? Did she want to get pregnant when she was with _him_?

He felt his stomach lurch but ignored it. He took another drink.

She had been married for three months now, to Phillip Roth, geneticist and executive at a huge biotech. firm. Wait. No. _She had married him again_. The first was in Jersey more than twenty years ago, and the second (and he deduced that it would be her last) was here in Minnesota. Maybe they really were meant to be together. Maybe he wasn't enough.

And as for Cuddy (or Cuddy-Roth or Roth), she was back to being a _real_ doctor. Cuddy was now a _board-certified_ endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic with several articles published in various medical journals.

"The PGA Service Group. Nice," he told no one again.

According to the file, she had written articles on:

(1) digestive neuroendocrine tumors – one article  
(2) perinatal influence on mental health – two articles (_Interesting.)  
_(3) hormonal effects on the developing brain – four articles (_Thank you, Rachel._)  
(4) hormonal effects on behavior – six articles (_Could that say something about her?_)  
(5) neuroendocrine carcinomas – one article  
(6) Cushing's Disease – three articles

She definitely had been busy, and he guessed that it wasn't going to change. Not one bit. He smiled, taking note of each category. He would read her articles later. He wasn't quite sure if he felt a twinge of pride or something akin to excitement.

"Cuddy. _Cuddy._" He was chanting her name, as if he could summon her. "Cuddy," he said. He read the next page.

Like all families with a geneticist-slash-biotech-firm-executive father and an endocrinologist for a mother, the four of them lived in a huge house with huge yards and a huge dog in Rochester. House was pretty sure Phillip Roth had a huge ego.

He carelessly laid the papers beside him on the bed, saving them for later. He wanted to get to the juicy parts. He finally got to a thick manila envelope and tore tape off of its surface. _A-ha_. He took photos and a thin, black CD case out of the envelope. The P.I. definitely got his job done.

There were photos of a nanny with Rachel and Colin, and of the kids at what seemed to him a completely pretentious school. There were more photos of Cuddy's pretentious house, and their pretentious car (or cars, for that matter). He held his breath when he got to the pile of what he surmised to be of Cuddy and her family. There were photos of the picture-perfect family in a pretentious restaurant and a pretentious ice cream parlor. There were photos of Cuddy and her husband at work. There were photos of…House decided that he was no masochist. Phillip Roth looked like a regular Jean Dujardin, and House wanted to smash his face with his cane. He felt a bit defeated and ambivalent. Phillip Roth truly looked like a good guy. More importantly, Cuddy looked happy. Happier than he saw her last; that was obvious. Happier than when she was with him; he didn't know. He didn't want to know.

He looked up at the dirty ceiling and sighed. He wasn't sure what to do with the photos. Should he burn them, throw them away, or keep them? And what about that video the P.I. talked about?

He finally had the CD in his hands, but he couldn't bring himself to open the case. It felt heavy, like it was made of lead. He couldn't watch what that damn P.I. had on video. To him, the CD was sacred. To him, _the idea of Cuddy_ was sacred (or something like it) and to participate in an act of voyeurism, like watching her like this, ruined Cuddy. Not that he didn't want to. By god, he missed her. He missed her scent and her smile; he missed her hands. He missed kissing her, and being with her. But he knew that he couldn't have her. Not ever, not again.

He took the laserdisc out of its case and saw light glinting on the walls of the motel room. He couldn't watch it. He bent the disc until it split in half. Shards of plastic flew from the bed. He was pretty sure he was going to step on those sooner or later.

He sobbed, once.

He tried to sleep, but as always, he couldn't.

He wondered if she still thought of him, or if she knew that Wilson was gone. He wondered if she knew he was dead or that he just faked his own death. He wondered if she would always love him, and if she wasn't lying when she told him that he was always going to be the most incredible man she has ever known; quote, end quote.

He wondered how much he hurt her when he fucked up two years ago; how long she cried over him, or how much she detested Dominika. Did she know about the hookers, or how empty he still felt afterwards? Why the hell had she agreed on dinner with Jerry? What happened to her house back in Jersey? Was Arlene still alive, and will he find himself castrated in the future? Would Rachel remember him? Did she remember what he did?

He wondered how long it took Cuddy to move on. He wondered how long it took Cuddy to move on with Phillip Roth. He wanted to know what brought them together again. He wanted to know how much he loved her and wanted to do anything for her. He wanted to know how much she loved him. Did Cuddy tell Phillip about him, like she did with Lucas?

He felt his chest tighten and fought the tears which threatened to fall again. He took another drink and wondered if the motel had anything stronger than scotch.

He wondered how guilty Cuddy was, and if she was aware of how much _she_ hurt him. He wondered if she knew how much he tried to please her; he wondered if she knew that he couldn't change. He still thought that she had wanted him to change. He finally admitted that they _both_ stumbled somewhere, at some time in their relationship.

He wondered if she still kept tabs on him. He really wanted her to know that he was breathing; alive. He wanted her to know that he was miserable, as he always knew he would be. He wanted her to know that during the time they were together, he wasn't as miserable as he thought he would. He wanted her to know that he was happy with her. He wanted her to be happy. He still wants her to be happy.

He sat up on the bed and placed the contents of her file inside the folder. He popped several Vicodin in his mouth and closed his eyes.

"Cuddy," he said to no one.


End file.
